This chapter examines the period immediately before the formal emergence of modern Islamophobia on September 11, 2001. This era witnessed the rearticulation of the Orientalist binary that pitted Islam and the Middle East—imagined as one monolithic civilization—against the West, a geopolitical theory known as a "clash of civilizations." The theory became an immensely influential essay-turned-book by Harvard University political scientist Samuel P. Huntington.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism and broader critiques of binary civilizational framing. Builds on: "The West defined itself against a constructed Muslim mirror-image."

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 217